Newcastle upon Tyne Castle

In the mid-2nd century the Romans built the first bridge across the River Tyne at the place where Newcastle now stands, naming it Pons Aelius — "bridge of Aelius", the family name of the Emperor Hadrian. To protect the crossing at the foot of the Tyne Gorge they raised a fort on a rocky outcrop overlooking the bridge, and Hadrian's Wall itself crossed just to its north, most likely descending the sloping street called the Side. In the Anglo-Saxon age the site came to be known as Monkchester, which suggests a monastery never yet located, and in the late 7th century a cemetery was established over the Roman fort.

In 1080 William the Conqueror sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north to defend the kingdom against the Scots. Returning from his campaign against Malcolm III, Curthose stopped at Monkchester and began building a "New Castle" — a wooden tower on an earthen motte, ringed by moat and stockade — the fortress that gave the city its name.

In 1095 Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, rose against William Rufus, and Rufus sent an army north to crush the revolt and take the castle. From then on it was crown property, an important base from which the king could control the northern barons.

Not a trace of Curthose's tower or mound survives. Henry II replaced it with a rectangular stone keep, commissioned in 1168 and built between 1172 and 1177 at a cost of £1,144; the master mason, Maurice, also built Dover Castle. A triangular stone bailey replaced the wooden one. During the civil wars at the end of King John's reign the castle was held by Philip of Oldcoates, and between 1247 and 1250, under Henry III, the great outer gateway known as the Black Gate was added — a barbican of two towers flanking a passage with vaulted guardrooms, drawbridges front and rear, and a portcullis.

Late in the 13th century Newcastle was enclosed by stone town walls, begun around 1265, which never took in the castle — and whose protection led to its neglect. By 1589, in Elizabeth I's reign, the castle was described as ruinous, and from the early 17th century shops and houses spread across much of the site.

In 1643, during the English Civil War, the Royalist mayor of Newcastle, Sir John Marley, repaired the keep and probably refortified the castle. The next year a Scottish army crossed the border in support of the Parliamentarians and besieged Newcastle for three months. The town walls were extensively damaged, and the last defenders to give up, on 19 October 1644, surrendered from the castle keep. From the 16th to the 18th century the keep served as a prison.

The Black Gate went its own way. In 1618 James I leased it to a courtier, Alexander Stephenson, who rebuilt the upper floors and let it out to tenants — one of them a merchant named Patrick Black, who gave the gatehouse its name. Houses filled both sides of the passage, part of the building became a public house, and by the early 19th century the Black Gate was a slum tenement housing up to sixty people.

In 1809 Newcastle Corporation bought the keep, gave it a new roof and battlements, and demolished the private dwellings inside the castle boundaries; further restorations followed in 1810, 1812 and 1848. In the mid-19th century the railway arrived, and a great viaduct carrying the East Coast Main Line was driven across the castle site — leaving only the keep and the Black Gate, the 75-foot gap between them almost entirely filled by the railway.

The Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne leased the Black Gate in the 1880s and restored it between 1883 and 1885, adding the top floor and pitched roof; the Society kept a museum there, whose bagpipe collection moved north in 1987 to become the Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum. The keep, a Grade I listed building and scheduled monument, was restored again between the 1960s and 1980s, and on 21 March 2015 keep and gatehouse reopened as a single attraction, "Newcastle Castle".